


The Fall

by straylize



Series: Royalty/Retainer AU [3]
Category: Persona 3, Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Assassination Plot(s), Assassins & Hitmen, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Persona 5 Spoilers, Royalty/Retainer AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 12:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straylize/pseuds/straylize
Summary: The Fall. A day that went down in Arisatan Kingdom history as the greatest tragedy they had ever seen. A tragedy brought about by a quest for revenge, a mission to change the face of their country as it was known.One assassin would change their world without ever knowing the strings attached to him, or the truth of the matter.





	The Fall

Just like every person has scars, every kingdom does as well. And for the Arisato Kingdom, in late night hours of the fourteenth day, the seventh month in Arisatan Calendar year 759, the biggest scar was left on their fair nation.

But every scar starts as an inflicted wound, and every inflicted wound has a source.

For the kingdom, the source of that scar had been twenty years in the making, in a city far from the Imperial Capital.

It had begun in the slums of Shido Region capital of Eigaon. On the second day, of the sixth month, in the year 739, a young boy was born—a boy who did not yet know what the future would hold for him, or what he would grow up to be. A boy with a gentle, frail mother, one who wished for her son’s happiness. A boy who held promise in his hands, because that loving mother was determined to find a way to make a better life for her son than being relegated to peasantry in a slum with no future.

She did her best to raise him well. Though she wanted nothing but the best future for him, she had values. Treat people with respect. Work hard. Don’t give up. Take advantage of an opportunity, but don’t abuse it. They weren’t exactly tenets that would help someone escape the slums, but she wanted to believe. Really and truly, she wanted to believe that the curse of Eigaon could be overcome with a positive outlook.

Life in the slums was difficult, after all. While other areas of the city experienced wealth and prosperity, they had little more than scraps. They worked hard—in fields, in factories, even in people’s homes—for minimal pay, while the ones that filled those wallets with meager funds lived in luxury. They were promised the world by the politicians and local government, but rarely saw returns on those words. Their homes were decrepit, their streets were falling apart; the infrastructure of the slums was on the verge of collapse. Crime rates were high, and it was rare to see anyone get out and make a name for themselves.

Many didn’t even want to; many held steadfast to their beliefs. The Shido family was charming; they came to the slums with their speeches of grandeur, promises of a better future, and most would buy into it. They saw no need to leave the slums, let alone Eigaon. The world outside of their bubble mattered little; they were blind to the way their government would take them for fools and lull them into a false sense of security. They were born in the slums, and they would die in the slums proudly with the belief that the future would bring prosperity, so long as their kids worked hard to earn their keep and trusted those in charge.

Despite those politics and those hardships, the boy was a happy one. It mattered little to him that they ate meager meals, that his clothes were often tattered and stitched back together. It hardly mattered to him that he knew nothing of his lineage outside of his doting mother. The boy went through his childhood with a smile, seeking his future goals and trying to make his mother proud.

 

“I want to go to the capital and be a soldier for the queen!” he would tell her with a bright smile. Of course, at the age of six, he didn't know better about the politics of the world. He didn’t know of the tensions that existed between House Shido and those in the Imperial Capital, and he didn’t know anything about what being a soldier truly entailed. But he had a goal, a dream that was bigger than the small scope of the Eigaon slums. And natural, a doting mother would always encourage. Regardless of the risk that posed, she wanted him to achieve what he dreamed; she wanted to believe that maybe he could be a voice.

The slums of Eigaon needed a voice. They needed someone to make it outside of the city walls to tell the story of the disparity in their lives They needed to be heard—and she had beliefs. Her son, that sweet boy, that he could do it. If he worked hard and didn’t give up, he could make it to Oratorio, and he could be the voice to let them know of problems with life in Eigaon.

Because she knew, better than anyone, that House Shido never stopped lying to their people.

There was an unfortunate truth to be had; for all that she knew of the Shido family’s lies and desperate attempts to cover up their corruption by stowing it away in the slums—she failed to understand how thorough they were when it came to purging threats. It was something she wouldn't learn until it was far too late to help.

It was in the boy’s seventh year that the new head of House Shido, Governor Masayoshi, started making more frequent visits to the slums. When in the slums, he often gave those grandiose speeches; he went out of his way to visit school children in their classrooms to give motivational words. To most in the slums, including that little boy, the Governor was as much an icon as Queen Arisato herself. But it was also in that seventh year that his world changed. An unseasonably chilly day in the ninth month, the boy’s mother fell ill. She had always been of a weak constitution, but the boy himself didn’t understand the symptoms. Rather than the fatigue and fever she usually bore, she was unable to hold down even water. Her skin had been more gaunt and pale than usual, and the whites of her eyes seemed yellow and clouded. Scared, he took off running; there had been a doctor in another section of the slums that would often make house visits when she was ill. If he could be quick and fetch her—

Surely, she would be okay. At least, that was what the boy believed. His short legs could only carry him so quickly, and when he arrived at the doctor’s home, he was nowhere to be found. With little choice, he ran back towards his home. He couldn't leave her alone for too long, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to heal her illness.

As he approached, he could feel a heat that betrayed the cool air of that day. The closer he ran, the worse it got. His vision would be obscured by thick black clouds of smoke; his breathing would become labored by the ash that found its way into his lungs.

_ Fire. _

The boy was unable to carry forward, both because he was physically unable, and because he had been stopped by those trying to douse the fire.

Nobody knew what had caused the fire, but by the time they had been able to extinguish it, nearly a quarter of the slum’s population had been counted among the fatalities. The poor infrastructure and materials used for the buildings had all gone up in flames.

One of the casualties of the fire, of course, had been the boy’s mother.

With no other family to speak of and no home to return to, he took residence in the Kougaon Orphanage. Rather than the bright, warm boy he had once been, he was sullen and withdrawn. He was mourning and lost, with no idea of how to carry forward. The other children in the orphanage ridiculed the boy; despite all being orphans, his lack of knowledge of his paternal lineage had drawn judgment from the adults that seeped over into the children. They didn't fully understand the implications of their words, but they cast him out, no less. Somehow, he was an oddity among oddities in that place.

“I don’t belong here,” he would mumble to himself when he could escape their laughing ears. He would scrape up the money to buy a newspaper to see if the Queen had a response to the tragedy and hope to the deities of every religion that he would be able to leave Eigaon, that he would be able to make the slums a better place by getting them the help they needed.

_'Surely, the queen would care.'_ He believed that wholly and completely.

The days following the fire turned to weeks, with little resolution as to what caused the fire, and why so many of their people had died. It took until the first month of Year 747 before Governor Shido made another appearance in the slums. And with that appearance came words that would be life-changing.

“Great people of Eigaon, hear my words. After months of investigating the cause of the Great Fire, the tragedy that struck this capital’s lower quarter, we have been able to assess the damage."

"The building materials provided to us by the Imperial Capital had been faulty. That, in conjunction with a faulty furnace in a central district home, caused the blaze that has left a mark on our city of providence. It is due to the neglect of the queen—her short-sighted nature for the territories beyond the Imperial Capital has left us in disarray. Our budget for infrastructure has been limited due to their greed. Try as we might to reach out to them, they have been unresponsive when it comes to the matters of aiding our great city."

"But rest assured, I will not rest until we can right these wrongs. Though I know it is impossible to restore the lives lost, or the sentimental items you treasured… we will recover. We will rebuild. And if we are unable to negotiate terms with the Imperial Government, then we shall restore ourselves to the independent nation we once were, free of their tyranny!”

His words were strong and assertive. One boy, edging on eight years old, believed every word of it as he stood mere feet from where the governor spoke.

_ 'The queen. It was the queen’s fault? Queen Arisato… doesn’t care about us at all? Mother died… because of the queen?' _

The words rang in his head; they froze him solid where he stood. His eyes widened with terror, and he couldn’t help the way tears spilled from his eyes.

His dreams had been wholly and completely shattered. As Governor Shido stepped from his pedestal, he made his way to that boy. He smiled softly, and placed a hand atop the child’s head. “Make this your strength. It’s difficult now, but one day, Eigaon will stand tall without aid. Children like you are our future, so you can’t give up.”

It was all he said before he walked away; but what that boy didn’t know was that the governor’s speech was little more than a farce.

 

While it had been true that the fire was caused by a furnace, it hadn’t been faulty. It hadn’t been accidental either. Shido knew a woman who was a threat to his seat; a frail woman who could topple House Shido’s rule if he wasn’t careful. That woman had a son, young, but bright—

A son that bore his cunning genes. A boy that was smart and ambitious; he had seen it for himself in his visits to the slums. And if that boy lived out his dreams of becoming a soldier, then surely, Eigaon would need to acquire the independence it needed in order to thrive, in order to break free of the chains the Arisato Kingdom had bound them in for a century and a half. The mother of that boy was an obstacle, and so, he had staged her death.

The odorless, tasteless poison in the fruit she purchased slowly destroyed her from the inside; though it was possible for her to survive from that alone, it was unlikely. Even still, all evidence of tampering would have to be destroyed. He utilized the boy’s panic and love for his mother to ensure he’d leave the district, and had an undercover guard add oil to the flame in their furnace. There was no doubt the old and decrepit wood would burn and spread—

In doing so, they could purge much of the population of the slums, as well. That had been a secondary goal, to purge was what useless to their society. Though the peasants were like sheep, easy to herd, they also offered very little to Eigaon as a people.

 

Who would miss what they didn’t know existed, after all? Those outside of the city knew nothing of the slums, and those within that did, they never spoke of it. Truly, it was a limb they wished amputated, and this had been a fine opportunity to make gains. 

He could fool the boy easily. He knew that just like the other sheep of the slums, they admired those words of grandeur. He wasn’t even ten, his mind was malleable and easy to influence; and so, Shido had taken it upon himself to mold the boy’s mind indirectly. The boy never had a clue. Just like the people of the slums, Shido’s words were to be believed; and in the time that followed, the boy tried to reconcile what would come next. His faith in the kingdom had been shattered.

_Governor Shido wanted to break free from the kingdom._

But what could a child of his age do? He didn’t know anything about politics; he didn’t even know a way out of the kingdom.

So he carried on.

At least once per month, Governor Shido would come to the slums and make baiting speeches. He would speak of how the Imperial Government wouldn’t respond to his pleas to fund rebuilding. He spoke of their belligerence and unwillingness to act, but promised to carry on and keep trying.

It was empty promise after empty promise, for Masayoshi Shido, of course, had never even informed Queen Arisato of the happenings. Though they had met numerous times at governmental summits, he only informed them of the prosperity of the upper quarter.

But empty promise and after empty promise was believed by that boy.

 

Months turned into years, and by the time that boy had turned fourteen, he’d had enough. Rather than move on and gain closure, he had grown angrier. He was consumed by rage and bitterness, my loss and grief and the feeling of having nowhere to belong. Shido constantly stoked the flames of his anger with those speeches until he knew there was only one true solution.

He’d had the time to learn how the government worked. Those years had taught him that war would only tear their city apart. More would die, and there was little point in independence if there wasn’t a population to enjoy that freedom.

_ The kingdom would have to fall. _

He had known that for a long while. Though it would send the entirety of the region into chaos, they could be free; it was chaotic, but effective. The Arisato family, and subsequently, the entire Kurusu family would have to fall in order to free everyone of the shackles the kingdom provided. A negligent kingdom with an awful monarch who cared nothing for her people—no one needed that. Not a single person needed to live under that tyranny.

But those outside of the slums didn’t share his ire. Rather than create chaos, they wanted to just be led by their rulers and carry on, even if their lives were worthless to those in power. It was no easy task to stage a rebellion; even mentioning such a thing casually would be met with poor reception.

In order for the kingdom fall, in order to remove the Arisatos and Kurusus from their high horses of power…

They would have to be eliminated entirely.

An assassination.

One he would carry out himself. He lacked the trust in others to confide in him, and he lacked the income to even pay an assassin. He knew, as well, that no assassin with their wits about them would make an attempt so bold—but he had nothing to lose. His mother was gone, he had no other family; he hardly had a will to live beyond trying to give their region freedom from the Arisato's power. To gain freedom, to avenge his mother’s death, he would have to destroy the very people that destroyed his own. But the boy knew he wasn’t yet capable. To infiltrate the Imperial Palace, to take the lives of the entire royal family and their closest nobles wasn’t something a fourteen-year-old could do. He had no combat training, let alone the capability to infiltrate. At his age, he knew that he wasn’t yet even old enough to join the imperial military to get near the palace walls.

So the boy waited. He waited, and he listened. The slums of Eigaon were a hotbed of crime, and that seedy underbelly, he knew, would eventually lead him to something that would benefit him. He edged his way into alleys, into taverns, into any place that wouldn’t turn him away until he finally found someone who would speak.

_ Nyxwing. _

The capital of the region headed by House Ikutsuki was home to an assassin famed in the underworld. He was an eccentric, cold man who went by the name Takaya Sakaki. The boy was told it was a longshot, but the man always had a use for more assassins.

Even if that had been a lie, the boy didn’t care. He knew that those in the slums didn’t care for his presence. He could leave the capital, and if he could somehow survive the journey to the city of eternal night, he could try to become a student of the famed assassin. And so, he elected to try. It was an unceremonious departure, with only the clothes on his back and the cheapest of foods. To journey to Nyxwing on foot was arduous, a week and a half’s long journey with nothing but risks.

The boy was battered and bruised when he arrived to the region. His thin, emaciated form seemed to appear even more so compared to the healthy people of Nyxwing. Even upon arrival, he hadn’t the faintest clue how to find the man known as Takaya.

 

_ Fortunate _ .

It was only a day after he arrived, seated outside of a tavern with little more than molded piece of bread that the boy was approached. The man was tall, almost as emaciated as him. His eyes shined a shade of gold that seemed completely foreign, like nothing the boy had ever before seen.

He’d held a hand out to the boy, gaze curious. A small chuckle had followed.

“You must be the one. The boy from Eigaon, correct?”

The boy looked to him with curious eyes; he didn’t take the man’s hand, nor did he answer the question. The man elected to continue, undeterred from that cautious nature.

“Yes… I see why my informant told me to look out for you. You certainly have…  _ the potential, _ ” His smile grew, and the boy could see that it wasn’t just that his eyes were other-worldly, it was that they were also a bit unhinged. “My name is Takaya Sakaki. If you wish for my tutelage, I suggest you pull yourself to your feet.”

The boy's eyes lit up at that moment; for the first time in years, there was eagerness in them. When he tried to pull himself to his feet, Takaya quickly stuck a foot out, a swipe to knock him down.

“The first lesson: _always_ remain guarded. An assassin cannot assassinate if they let their emotions rule their actions.”

 

The boy learned.

Slowly but surely, he learned precisely what he needed to. Each day had been a grind, though Takaya was thorough in that training. He aided the boy in gaining muscle mass, in moving with agility. He aided him in stealth tactics and how to wield a variety of weapons.

Never once did Takaya ask who the boy’s target was.

Never once did the boy question just how an informant knew of his arrival, or his goals.

He carried forward. He learned diligently. He learned of Takaya Sakaki’s beliefs, his creeds, what drove him to be an assassin, and his ultimate goals. He never shared his own, because his teacher had told him that he should never be too honest.

The boy never really knew how much of Takaya’s stories were true; only what drove him.

Time taught him to change his appearance frequently. It taught him to adopt many names. It taught him how to kill. He had failings, but the years passed, and the hard work paid off. By nineteen, the boy had grown into a young man. He could enter a home undetected and end their lives without alerting a single person. Most of those assassinations have been credited to Takaya; they both preferred handguns with silencers, making them appear similar. Though the boy also had an affinity for daggers that made some of his kills unique; it was his own mark, and the one he planned to leave on the kingdom.

 

Just weeks before his twentieth birthday, Takaya declared that he was ready. The boy no longer needed his training—and as a last gift, he made an offer.

“Whichever city your target it is in—I will provide you entrance to their military ranks. This will give you time to acclimate to your surroundings… and access to information that I can no longer provide you.”

He received a nod in response; the boy’s gaze was more frigid than Takaya’s as he made his declaration.

“The Imperial Capital. I’m headed to Oratorio,  _ master. _ ”

Takaya laughed softly, offering an acknowledgment.

He’d already known, after all. From the day his informant brought that information—Baofu was a thorough man, after all. The information had come directly from Governor Shido himself. Always one step ahead of the boy, and Takaya merely played his role in doing what he was paid to do: train the boy to be an assassin.

After all, if the Great Mother of Darkness, the goddess Nyx herself was going to bring about the end of days, it would be much easier without the Arisatos and Kurusus meddling in their agenda. It had been easy to play his intentions down to the boy, but when he was left alone, Takaya could only laugh.

 

Whatever happened when that boy reached Oratorio… It would surely be an event that nobody would forget so long as they lived.


End file.
